Bolling calls for redistricting reform

Video: Bolling calls for redistricting reform

Former Lt. Gov Bolling calls for redistricting reform

Former Lt. Gov Bolling calls for redistricting reform

Dave Ress, dress@dailypress.com

NEWPORT NEWS — Virginia's badly gerrymandered congressional and legislative districts are poisoning our politics and leading the state toward a Washington-style gridlock, former Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling told a small group of Peninsula business leaders Thursday.

And it's past time for Virginians to tell their legislators to stop the games-playing when drawing district boundaries, he said.

"There are too many people more interested in making points or picking fights than in solving problems" now that they've carved out safe seats for themselves that often have little to do with the real communities voters live in, Bolling said.

When legislators from one party try to pack voters who lean toward their party into their district, the result is that extremists end up with the real say in who goes to Richmond or to Washington, he said.

"There's no battle in November, the battle comes in May or June for the party nomination," he said.

And that translates to sessions of the General Assembly or the U.S. Congress where "talking about wanting to compromise is seen as heresy or as a sign of weakness," he said. "The gulf is widening."

Alan Diamonstein, who represented Newport News in the House of Delegates from 1967 to 2001, shared a story about carving up the old multi-member Newport News district to ensure that he and the city's two other delegates each had their own districts, even though they lived within a few blocks of one another. Then he said redistricting game-playing is out of control.

"It's got to be changed. If you don't ... then there will be no compromise, no discussion, no debate and what will happen is everything will be decided in caucus," he said.

Bolling asked the group — assembled by state Sen. John Miller, D-Newport News, and Judy Ford Wason, a former Reagan administration official who founded Christopher Newport University's public policy center — to join the efforts a new foundation, One Virginia 2021, that is trying to build a grass roots campaign for redistricting reform.

He said reforms in other states haven't necessarily led to big shifts in control of legislatures, but have given middle-of-the-road voters a larger voice and encouraged debate and compromise during legislative sessions.

Shannon Valentine, a former delegate from Lynchburg who is spearheading the foundation's effort, said voters should watch for a California-style petition drive calling for redistricting reform.

Even though Virginians can't get referendum questions on a ballot as Californians can through a petition drive, doing so will send a strong message to the General Assembly, she said.